


Glitching Out

by Waffle-o (XylB)



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: FAHC, GTA Universe, Immortal Fake AH Crew, also referencing GTA servers here, but they're immortal, so there is major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 15:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9240428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XylB/pseuds/Waffle-o
Summary: You have been disconnected from the server.





	

“Heist's not working – let's restart!” Geoff shouts over the comms, and there's a collective sigh before they set about to do just that.

Gavin slips on his shades and kicks his feet up on the dashboard as Michael starts the car, glancing over at him before cooking a grenade and dropping it between his feet. The explosion flips the car.

Jack crashes the chopper into the side of a cliff, blowing up him and Geoff.

Ray scoots in closer to Ryan, back to back as they face off the cops in a loud firefight.

“Ready?” He asks pointlessly as he loads the rocket launcher, hefting it onto his shoulder and aiming at the ground. Ryan nods and Ray blows them up.

\--

Michael wakes up in a morgue – he really hates waking up in the morgue, but it's not as bad as waking up in a coffin. It's dark and freezing inside his chamber and Michael sighs heavily, twitching his limbs to make sure they all work.

He kicks the door and moments later footsteps approach, loud on linoleum. He kicks again, and the footsteps stop and the lock starts turning. Michael lets himself fall limp again and he's pulled out on the sliding cot, bright light making his eyelids red before he opens them and immediately punches the morgue technician, knocking him out cold with a clean connect to his cheek.

Michael slips the tag off his toe and rips it up before he swings his legs off to go find clothes. He leaves the blanket on the cot and, after a quick search, finds his bloodstained, half-burnt clothes in a closet at the back. He nearly dislocates his shoulder busting the door open, but he manages and quickly gets dressed. Shit, his guns are even there, warped and mostly likely ruined, but he grabs them with a smile.

He kicks the morgue technician on his way out and whistles cheerfully as he walks out into the bright midday and warm sun.

–-

Gavin wakes up upside down in a twisted cage of scorched metal and melted leather – the remains of the car. The crushed underside traps him in the seat and he guesses the cops couldn't remove his body. Michael's gone and Gavin curses softly to himself as he figures out which limbs aren't trapped by steel. Not many, it seems, his left arm and his right foot free to move but nothing else. Glass presses uncomfortably into his cheek as he looks around to get his bearings.

Blood rushes to his head while he considers his options. He's probably in an impound lot with no one around to hear him shout, but maybe the police'll come by. He might be able to fight his way through them – he'll definitely have the element of surprise.

Gavin passes out in fits and starts, unconscious for stretches of time and then suddenly awake again. Maybe an hour or so passes when someone appears next to the car. All Gavin can see through the thin sliver of window space is scuffed brown boots.

Suddenly the car shifts and Gavin scrambles to do – something, but he still can't move. The person grunts and the car moves again and Gavin realises they're trying to flip it over. Shouldn't be too hard – from what he can gather, the car lost most of its weight in the explosion, now nothing more than a charred husk of an Adder.

The person lifts and the car lands heavily on blackened rims, Gavin groaning as the impact jars him. His head knocks against the smashed roof.

“Gavin?” It's Michael, leaning down to peer in the sliver of window space, and he grins when he sees Gavin. He's in new clothes – must have changed at base first – with a backpack over one shoulder.

“Hey,” Gavin responds, voice dry and throat scratchy.

“Don't worry, buddy, I'll get you out of here,” Michael says, and Gavin blinks in acknowledgement.

Michael disappears from sight and the next thing Gavin feels is Michael kicking what used to be the door, pressed painfully into Gavin's ribs. The lock's probably melted, but Michael fixes that with a silenced gunshot that's terrifyingly loud in the small space around Gavin's head.

Eventually- after some more thudding and grunting – Michael wrenches the door open, exposing Gavin's side to the warm air. He carefully helps Gavin extricate himself, strong, sure hands guiding him out of the maze of distorted leather.

The scraps of Gavin's clothing fall away as he slides out, leaving him completely bare ass naked in the open air. He groans and Michael swings his bag around, balancing it on a knee as he hands Gavin a stack of folded clothes and a pair of shoes. There's even briefs in there, and Gavin sighs in relief as he gets dressed.

Michael brushes ash out of his hair and presses a gun into his hands – another golden pistol, identical to the one that he knows is irretrievable where it's trapped in the glovebox. Gavin tucks it into his waistband and Michael grins at him again, hauling the bag onto his shoulder again, one thumb tucked under the strap.

“I think Jack and Geoff are at the airport,” Michael says. “Wanna come with?”

Gavin nods and follows Michael out of the impound lot.

\--

Jack wakes up with a control column smashed into the seat between his legs, worryingly close to his balls. The rest of the control panel is burnt and twisted, half-melted buttons and fried wires sticking out of the gaps. He's not in too bad of a position, but bad enough he can't actually get out – seatbelt practically welded to what's left of his clothes and twisted metal pressed against his shoulders, trapping him in the seat.

Just under the large dent of the roof sticking down between him and the passenger side, Jack can see Geoff's arm, sprawled over the centre console. Geoff groans and his fingers twitch as he shifts, swearing quietly.

“Can you move?” Jack croaks, carefully moving his head on the destroyed headrest.

“No,” Geoff replies, fingers twitching again. “I'm crushed in. You?”

“Not much better. You're probably worse, though.”

“Yeah, because you fucking crashed me into the side of the cliff!” Geoff coughs immediately afterwards and his entire arm jerks. Glass slides onto the warped floor as Jack shifts.

They spend what must be an hour and a half in there, occasionally trying to get out and discovering each time what else is melted together – the doors, the seats, Jack's gun, Geoff's shoes. Geoff cusses him out and Jack just chuckles quietly.

Heavy footsteps approach the chopper and Jack's sure it's the police, both him and Geoff falling silent and still as the footsteps stop. Jack holds his breath as the someone pulls at the ruined door.

“Jack? Geoff?” They asks, and Jack sighs in relief at Michael's voice.

“Yeah, we're both in here,” he says the same time Geoff yells “Yes, you asshole!”

Michael laughs and says something Jack can't hear – a moment later, Gavin's laughter rings through.

“Gavin!” Jack exclaims.

“You've never been that excited to see me before,” Gavin replies, the smile clear in his voice.

“Well, I am now!” Jack says, and Geoff laughs.

Michael busts the door open with a silenced gunshot and it takes a few minutes – and a few more gunshots - for him and Gavin to force open the door. It clatters to the ground and Jack's surprised at the asphalt outside.

“Where are we?” He asks.  
“Airport,” Michael replies as he grabs Jack's hand.

He helps Jack swing a leg over the control column and inch out, tatters of his clothes left behind in the chopper. Gavin helpfully hands him clothes and shoes from a backpack and Jack starts putting them on while Michael goes around to the other side of the chopper to get Geoff.

Gavin gives Jack a gun and disappears with the backpack around the other side, and a minute later Geoff emerges, grumbling fondly at Gavin as Michael shoves a gun at him. Michael zips the bag up and swings it onto his shoulder, smiling broadly at them.

“Do we know where Ryan and Ray are?” Jack asks, stashing his gun in his sweatshirt pocket.

“They were in the street,” Geoff answers, scrubbing a hand through his hair and pulling a face at the black flakes that float onto his clothes. “They could be anywhere.”

“We'll probably have to split up,” Michael says. “Neither of them were in my morgue.”

Jack nods and glances at Geoff, who sighs and shrugs.

“Let's go find those fuckers,” he says.

\--

Ryan wakes up to darkness and the strong smell of – pine? He figures out his hands are crossed over his chest and he groans internally, hoping to fucking god that he hasn't been buried yet.

The coffin is small, his feet flat against the bottom and if he moves his legs, they knock against the sides. It doesn't smell enough like dirt for him to be already six feet under, so he stays still and tries to listen for any clues where he is.

A door opens and two pairs of footsteps pound on the floor. Ryan breathes out a sigh of relief – he's not underground yet. The footsteps stop on either side of him.

“Don't the police want an autopsy?” One voice says from his left – male, late twenties if Ryan had to guess.

“Boss said he was too disfigured for that. Blown up by a rocket. Couldn't even get the dental records,” someone else replies from the right, this guy older – thirties, forties?

The other whistles low. “Shit, what a way to go out.”

Ryan silently moves his hand and grins to himself as he knocks sharply against the lid. He can practically feel the tension that suddenly winds through the room as it goes deathly silent.

“Did...Did that just knock?” The younger voice asks shakily.

“I think so?” The other replies, something like fear twisting through his voice.

Ryan knocks twice again and one guy audibly jumps.

“Did we get the wrong guy?” Young guy.

“No, I saw him go in! He's completely dead!”

“Well it doesn't fucking sound like it!”

“Well do you want to check?!”

“Fuck no! You do it!”

Ryan waits patiently as the latches flip, closes his eyes as the lid opens.

“He – He looks completely fine,” the older one whispers. Footsteps come around to the right to join him.

“What the fuck?” The younger whimpers, voice shaking badly.

Ryan snaps his eyes open and looks at them, a wicked grin curling up the corner of his mouth.

“Hello, boys,” he says, and they scream.

Ryan sits up and punches the older guy when he tries to push Ryan back down. The younger guy stares at Ryan with wide eyes and pale cheeks, nervous sweat breaking out on his forehead. Ryan rolls his eyes and carefully gets out of the coffin, noting the ruins of his clothing. His jeans are mostly on, scorched at the legs and bloodstained all over. His shirt isn't as bad, but that's because it was mostly protected by his jacket, which is burnt and scraped all over. Ryan tuts and brushes ash off his shoulders, flexing his toes to check his shoes still work.

The poor guy looks like he's about to faint, so Ryan punches him to help him out with that.

He adjusts his jacket on his shoulders and grabs the nearest weapon he can find – a crowbar in the corner of the room. He glances around the room to check for any of his own shit or anything else useful, but there isn't much in it. Ryan assumes it's the back room of the undertakers, but he doesn't really care as he breaks the lock on the back door and lets himself out.

The sun is bright and hot and he sticks to the shadows as he figures out where he is. Corner of Central and Park.

He wonders where the others are.

\--

Ray wakes up in a chilly morgue locker, sighing as soon as he realises that's what it is. He moves – but it's soundless, and Ray pauses for a moment to figure out if he's really moving or if he's just imagining that.

He raises his foot to kick the door and his foot goes right through the door. Ray panics and lifts his hands to touch his body but they go right through him – through everything. He somehow manages to move out of the locker, drifting out into the room and starting down at his ghostly hands. They flicker – his entire body flickers – and he curses as he realises he's been disconnected from his body.

Ray experimentally tries to float out of the morgue, going through the wall and into bright sunshine he can't feel. Light streams through him and he continues forward, stepping into the street and lifting a hand to run through his hair when he remembers he can't touch himself. At least his clothes are still on – burnt and charred from the rocket but _on_. Ray turns right and gets to the crossing when something tugs at him, like a painful hook in his chest.

He stares down at his hands and tries moving away again, and they flicker violently, breaking up in black and white pieces and jerking to the sides like a glitching TV. Ray surges forward again and shouts as the hook pulls at him again, like he's tied to the morgue, to his body. He grits his teeth and pushes again, not getting halfway across the street before his body splits into staticky pieces and agony tears through him like he _is_ getting ripped apart. Black and red crowd his vision and he screams as he flickers once, twice, and out like his power's cut.

The next thing he's conscious of is waking up in the morgue locker again, the memory of pain still bouncing around in his mind as he drifts away from his body again. This time he doesn't dare leave the morgue, instead checking through the rooms for any hint of where he is.

He doesn't find any other crew members in the morgue with him, and the morgue technician on duty is snoring on a pile of paperwork in the dim office in the back. Ray checks the back room and finds his real clothes and guns – more shit he can't touch.

Ray roams to the outside a little, but going too far hurts again and he rockets right back to the building. So instead he sits on the floor outside his locker and waits.

When the clocks ticks over to officially two hours later, the front door opens. Multiple pairs of footsteps walk in – four people? - and Ray holds his breath as they approach the corner.

Michael steps around the corner and a rush of relief surges through Ray, his shoulders dropping.

“Ray!” Michael says, rushing up to him and stopping short when he realises that Ray's not – solid. “Ray?” He asks, crouching slowly as the rest of the crew comes up behind him.

Ray shrugs. “I got disconnected.” He eyes the smudge of ash on Ryan's cheek and the dust in Geoff's hair and wonders where they all were. Who found who.

“Fuck, okay, let's get you out and then we can get you back in,” Michael says, running a hand through his hair and looking up at the lockers.

“My stuff's in the back,” Ray says, pointing to the other end of the morgue. Gavin starts towards it, grabbing Jack's wrist and dragging him along, too.

Michael sets his backpack on the ground and Ray moves out of the way as Ryan and Geoff go to his locker, undoing it easily and pulling out the cot with his body on it. Michael hands them clothes and Ray watches as they awkwardly dress his dead body, slipping off the tag on his toe and angling his feet into shoes.

“I guess you guys are carrying him?” Michael asks, and Geoff nods. Geoff and Ryan manhandle Ray's body to a standing position, slinging one of his arms around each of their shoulders.

“He's cold,” Ryan says, reaching up to grip the hand hanging limply over his shoulder.

“No shit, I'm dead,” Ray deadpans, rolling his eyes. “And it's not like it's your first time with a dead body, _Ryan_.”

“Hey, I'm just sayin'.”

Jack and Gavin return with Ray's stuff, shoving it unceremoniously into the bag. Jack holds the rocket launcher, securing the strap over his chest and shifting to make it more comfortable. Michael tugs up Ray's hood to cover his pale, bloodless face.

They leave as a unit, Ray staying close to his body and Michael bringing up the rear.

\--

Reconnecting is a very stop-start process that involves defibrillators and cyanide, and as much as Ray hates it, it's not exactly the first time he's been dropped.

Ryan holds his shoulders down while Geoff charges up the paddles, glancing at Michael, who's steadying a needle near a vein in Ray's arm. Jack and Gavin pin down Ray's legs with their elbows, fingers tight around his ankles.

Ray stands beside and watches as Michael stabs the needle in, pushing cyanide in him and a moment later Geoff shocks him and Ray winces as his body spasms. He feels a faint tug to it but it's not strong enough, and he shakes his head sadly when Geoff looks at him to check if it worked.

Michael preps another needle and Geoff ups the voltage. And they do it again.

Reconnecting is a weird process where they need to kill and resuscitate Ray at the same time, hence the cyanide and the paddles – a mixture of chemicals and electricity that gets his heart going and then stops it a moment later, hopefully bringing him to life enough so his death triggers the respawn part of his brain and gets him back online.

It's an extremely difficult balance to get right.

Michael and Geoff try another time. And a fourth time.

On the fifth, they get close. Ray flickers badly and almost breaks apart like he did on the street crossing, screaming again as agony rips white-hot through him. But he doesn't quite snap, back to staring at translucent hands as Ryan shoots him a sympathetic look. Gavin frowns and glances up at Geoff.

“You've got to be close,” he says.

“Yeah, we're getting there,” Geoff replies, tossing Gavin a quick smile. “One or two tries left.”

Michael injects and Geoff shocks and Ray gets almost torn apart, not quite but fucking close, black and red almost completely clouding his vision but then it clears and all he's looking at is his body jerking violently under Ryan, Jack, and Gavin. He sighs and Michael flicks the needle, lining it up at the vein again.

Cyanide, then shock, and this time Ray flickers into black and white sections like that glitching TV, black sweeping so suddenly across his vision that he doubles over, shouting as pain lances through him and he's shredded apart.

He wakes up screaming, legs thrashing under Jack's powerful hold and bucking up uselessly against the strong grip Ryan has on his shoulders. Michael drops the needle to pin his arms to the bed as Geoff backs away. Gavin's fingers tighten on his calf and Geoff returns to help Michael pin his other arm.

It only lasts for a moment, and then he goes suddenly limp, his throat dry. Ray closes his eyes and gradually the crew stops holding him down, Ryan's hands turning from iron clamps to soft reassurance. They start to slip away and Ray reaches up to hold one fast, the warmth of Ryan's hand grounding him. Ryan stays and Ray feels his other arm being bandaged.

“You alright?” Ryan asks above him. Ray nods without opening his eyes and rests his cheek on their hands.

“Tired,” he whispers. “Floaty.”

It's weird being back in his real body – he's not longer weightless and he's definitely no longer floating, the bed very solid and very real beneath him. His limbs feel heavier than usual and even considering moving his legs seems tiring. His heart races too fast and he's panting too hard for just lying down – a combination of the cyanide and the shock still making his nerves shaky. His clothes feel too scratchy, too much, and even the hair on his forehead feels weird. Ray swallows and concentrates on steadying his breathing as Ryan's thumb rubs comforting circles on his other shoulder.

“Hey, at least you're connected again,” Ryan says, and Ray nods.

“Fucking finally,” he mutters.


End file.
